Two things were wrong with my car. One was a real problem and one was not a problem at all. I printed a solution to both, and only one of them makes any sense.
The sensible one: missing wheel centre caps
My car was missing its wheel centre caps. This is one of the great small annoyances of running an older car. The part is worth almost nothing, the car looks unfinished without it, and replacing it means hunting down a piece for a model nobody stocks any more.
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So I printed them and clipped them on. That is the whole story, and that is rather the point. This is the most boring possible use of a 3D printer and also the one that most clearly justifies owning one.
The ridiculous one: a rooster in boxing gloves
Then there is this, which solves nothing whatsoever.
A rooster wearing red boxing gloves, mounted on the tow hook. It serves no function. It improves nothing. Nobody asked for it.
And yet it is the one people notice, which is worth thinking about for a second. Half the value of owning a printer is fixing things properly. The other half is that you can put a boxing rooster on your car for the cost of a few grams of filament, purely because the idea amused you at eleven at night.
Why buy it when you can print it
Most arguments for buying a 3D printer are about starting a business. I think the better argument is smaller and more honest than that: you stop being stuck.
A missing clip, a snapped handle, a cap that no longer exists for a car this old. These are not problems any more, they are an evening. And once the machine is there for the sensible repairs, the silly things cost you nothing extra.
If you want the version of this with actual numbers attached, I track what the printer earns in the income series, and I wrote up restoring a €20 second-hand chess set the same way.
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